This Week's Miscellany (04/05/24)
The myth of the Golden Age, Austen, Gaskell, Booklegging, Babies, Anti-Feminism, and "Sex assigned at birth"
Hi, I’m Haley! Book midwife (editor) and author. Hello to new subscribers and welcome all to another edition of This Week’s Miscellany. TWM is full of my favorite things from around the web, typically trending literary.
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If only we could get back to the good old days. The days when men were heroes and women were virtuous and all was right with the world. Nowadays we’ve lost all sense of right and wrong and morality is decaying. Now all is decadence and vice.
Does that sound familiar? Do you find yourself expressing this sentiment? If so, you’re not alone. Every culture in every age has thought something like this: the golden age is in the past and if only we could return to it! I think about the nineties when kids were free to grow up without cellphones. Boomers speak with reverence of the greatest generation. And this nostalgia is nothing new. Each generation of Roman orators spoke of the past generation as the age when virtue prevailed and men were men. And then their children spoke the same way about them.
In the film Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson’s character is enamored with the Parisian literary set of the 1920s. After a solitary late night stroll through the streets of Paris, he finds himself suddenly in the past. Each night he goes back to the 1920s to talk to Ernest Hemingway and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
And he meets a beautiful young woman played by Marion Cotillard. She longs for la belle epoque of the late 1800s which in her estimation was when life was really beautiful. And I empathize. It’s impossible for me to write fiction in a contemporary setting. I can only write about the past because I have more affection for it.
The golden age is always just out of reach. The world is going to Hell in a handbasket but there was a time when things were good, we say. The project is to get back to the good stuff.
But one strange voice speaks against this roar of nostalgia: Christianity. It does not promise a return to a golden past. It speaks of something new. The fall of Adam and Eve is not simply reversed. Instead, “O happy fault” is the beginning of a journey to a new creation. We are not told to return to Genesis 1. We are invited to something even better than to be Adam and Eve in the garden. We are offered a more intimate relationship with God than walking with him in Eden. We are invited to become united to Christ through the Eucharist, to participate in his new Easter life. He is making all things news, not merely turning back the clock.
I would love your prayers for my upcoming surgery next Thursday! You can read the whole saga here, but it’s a common surgery with a low chance of complications. And yet, I’m a little nervous having never had a major surgery or gone under general anesthesia before. I’m receiving Anointing of the Sick for the first time in preparation for surgery. And I am eager to just get it over with and start recovery. I have a LOTR extended edition marathon planned with the kids.
Links
I always love a chance to talk about Jane Austen so it was fun to join Lisa Mladinich on the Homeschool Connections Podcast to discuss why we should introduce her to young people!
I read all of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels in honor of a beloved professor who loved and studied her and passed away from cancer when she was far too young. After she died, I ordered Cranford, North & South, and Wives & Daughters and fell in love with all three. I loved this reflection on Molly Gibson from Wives & Daughters!
I owe my discovery of Elizabeth Gaskell to a high school senior I met when subbing for one of my coworkers. It’s nice to think that God’s providence applies to the smaller joys in life, as much as to the greater joys. For without this specific subbing job, I don’t know if, even now, I would have discovered Gaskell’s books. She is, unfortunately, a criminally underrated author.
I enjoyed this little round up of books with great girl protagonists (I still vividly remember my first reading of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle!)
Brightest of Flames: Six Outstanding Girl Protagonists by
And you know I’m a big fan of owning physical copies of books. Our home library has between 2,000 and 3,000 books and I’m not slowing down.
A Guide to Booklegging: How (and why) to collect, preserve, and read the printed word by
There are real repercussions to ignoring the reality of biological sex—repercussions that affect women, their spaces, and their experiences. I was almost surprised that the NYTimes published this piece on this very controversial issue: how does the language we use about sex and gender shape the way the think about these realities?
The Problem with Saying “Sex Assigned at Birth” by Alex Byrne and Carole K. Hooven
Sex matters for health, safety and social policy and interacts in complicated ways with culture. Women are nearly twice as likely as men to experience harmful side effects from drugs, a problem that may be ameliorated by reducing drug doses for females. Males, meanwhile, are more likely to die from Covid-19 and cancer, and commit the vast majority of homicides and sexual assaults…terminology about important matters should be as clear as possible.
A great answer to how to actually reverse the trend of our current population bust: a combination of policy that makes parenthood attractive and a supportive community attitude toward family life:
What Happened When This Italian Province Invested in Babies by Jason Horowitz and Gaia Pianigiani
Full houses have increasingly become history in Italy, which has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe and where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, as well as Pope Francis, has warned that Italians are in danger of disappearing. But the Alto Adige-South Tyrol area and its capital, Bolzano, more than any other part of the country, bucked the trend and emerged as a parallel procreation universe for Italy, with its birthrate holding steady over decades.
The reason, experts say, is that the provincial government has over time developed a thick network of family-friendly benefits, going far beyond the one-off bonuses for babies that the national government offers.
An excellent critique of the anti-feminists (and some well-deserved praise of women wrestling with the real questions like Abigail Favale and Erika Bachiochi):
Why Antifeminism isn’t enough by Nathan Schlueter
By poisoning the very idea of feminism without suggesting a more usable term, Gress threatens to erase from memory, and from present view, the real injustices suffered by women. However, if one endorses the gains of first-wave feminism, as Gress seems to do, then why the vicious attack on first-wave feminism itself? And why avoid addressing the real challenges downstream from those gains? If women are included in higher education, business, the professions, and political life, how will they work alongside men (and men alongside them)? How will these opportunities affect their decisions to marry and have children? How will it affect their actual marriages and children? What kind of cultural forms should guide them in this new arrangement?
And for paid subscribers, I shared about three forthcoming new book projects I have in the works!
Time is running out to join us this summer!
On the fence about coming to Belgium and Germany with Fr. Harrison Ayre and my husband Daniel and I this summer? Now’s the time to sign up! 🇧🇪 🇩🇪
If you’re looking for a small group to travel with, daily Mass, beautiful cathedrals and abbeys, and the best Trappist breweries in the world, join us! We have 6 spots left before we close the trip at 30 people. And time is running out to reserve your spot!
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We’ll see the stunning Ghent Altarpiece (The Mystic Lamb), go on a canal boat tour of Bruges, pray at the Flanders Field American Cemetery, visit the crypt of St Damian Molokai, go to gorgeous Belgian abbeys (and taste the beer from their breweries), see cathedrals in Germany (Aachen and Cologne), and more!
We’ve been anticipating this trip for two years and I can’t believe it’s just around the corner. Half of the pilgrims on our whisky pilgrimage in Scotland in 2022 are coming back for Belgium which just goes to show you that the experience of traveling with Select International Tours is something special. I can’t wait to see them and meet new friends and this year we’re even bringing our teenager for his first overseas trip.
You can check out the registration page: Heavenly Hops Pilgrimage with Fr. Harrison Ayre to Belgium and Germany.
And below you can view the full itinerary (except one update is that we’ll be flying home from Frankfurt rather than Cologne):
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend! And a huge thank you to all those who upgraded to a paid subscription this week. This is a reader-supported newsletter so if you enjoy getting these emails, please consider supporting this Substack by upgrading to a paid subscription with the button below.
Thanks for reading!
Haley
(Editor of Word on Fire Votive, Author, Podcaster)
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That anti-feminism article was so good! I so agree. I read Gress’ book and was really surprised and disappointed. Now I’ve found Abigail and Erika and am finding what I thought I’d find in Gress.
Thanks for the mention Haley :) Wonderful collection of articles to dive into and reflections to ponder! Keeping you in my prayers this Thursday and wishing you peace as you go into it as well as a speedy recovery.